Whales were out of waving distance
Eva stepped out of her garden gate onto the beach with sand like cement. Blades of grass stuck up like zoomed-in hair follicles. Whales were out of waving distance.
The sky was peat and the problem she'd left on her desk, easily solved if she'd been halfway competent, braced her mouth into a smile.
This was a terrible place. You just walked and walked without anything changing, except that when you looked back, the gate was behind rocky walls and the idea of turning back was as exasperating as keeping going.
Why didn't she have a dog? She should have had a dog. She had on the wrong shoes.
She broke into the bank of seaweed that was choking the water back. Her foot crunched over a crust of tiny white seashells hidden in the stems, their perfect shapes coated in grains of grey sand. She reached down to touch them, straining for the relief of beauty, and got cold grit under old leaves.